Midnight Reign (23 page)

Pretending to break down under all her mom’s tempting words, Dawn wiped the medicinal goop off her fingers as she walked toward the vampire. After the gel was gone, she opened her arms as if to suddenly embrace everything Eva had to offer.

Probably because she wanted it to happen so badly, Eva’s ageless face lit up at her daughter’s approach.

Abruptly, Dawn dodged around Eva, diving for the first weapon she could—the whip chain. Within a second, she had it unfurled, spinning at her side. The silver could poison Eva.

The vamp seemed to sink into herself. “Oh, Dawn.”

Heart fully hardened, she struck at her enemy, the silver dart on the end of the whip slicing through the air.

With mind-bending speed, Eva avoided the attack.

Dawn jerked in surprise, the flow of her chain interrupted. Annoyed, she got back into her rhythm.

“I’m telling you to put it down before you get hurt,” Eva said, sounding so much like a mother that Dawn almost did stop.

But it didn’t really work with a middle-aged woman bitching at her from a young girl’s body. “What’s the Underground, Eva?”

The vampire looked heartbroken.

“Where’s Frank?
Do you know where the hell my dad is?
”

“Please put that down….”

Dawn spun the whip backward so it slowed at the apex of the spin, then allowed it to fall back into her hand. But just as Eva looked relieved, Dawn quickly stepped forward, skip-stepping into a tornado kick, releasing the whip and going into a right elbow hook spin to gain enough speed to strike.

Slowly, Eva nodded, then sighed into Danger Form.

She whirled, ghost tendrils in misty motion, then snapped into a cloud of breathtaking angel-featured splendor. Before Dawn could maneuver the chain around again, Eva had zipped under the arc of the whip’s spin and flashed up to Dawn’s hand, jarring the handle away.

Aghast, Dawn could only watch as the vamp masterfully manipulated the handle, circling the whip and dervishing her own way across the room. When she released the chain, it cut into a wall, spitting plaster, then died to the carpet.

As if to punctuate the finale, Eva popped back into human form, wisps of silver streaming from her body like iced smoke.

“That’s so not going to work,” she said, sounding like Jac—naïvely disappointed.

For the first time, Dawn felt truly beaten, having no options. Her pulse vibrated, turning her stomach.

“I guess it’s time to prove,” Eva said, “that my intentions aren’t that bad at all.”

Out of nowhere, someone gripped Dawn’s arm. She glanced up to find Julia shaking her head at her.
Bad dog,
she seemed to be saying.
Bad daughter.

A rumbling filled the air, and Dawn glanced at the fireplace, which was moving away from the wall, exposing a slat.

Before she knew what was happening, Julia and Eva had taken both her arms, forcefully ushering her through the dark space, down some stairs….

Toast,
Dawn thought.
I’m toast. No one will ever know what happened to me
.

But when a door opened at the end of a tunnel, she saw a light. They shoved her into it, and there, in the blinding flash, she saw a well-kempt man in a T-shirt and jeans, chained to an overstuffed couch.

Dawn fell to her knees, then sprint-crawled toward him, choking on happiness and fear.

As she jumped up and collided into his chest, his beefy arms wrapped around her, cutting off what little she had left of her breath.

Then the door behind Dawn and her father crashed shut.

D
AD!”
Dawn cried into Frank’s brawny chest, clinging to him. His familiar scent—the musk of car grease, a hint of old beer days gone by—washed through her.

He was real. She held him tighter. He was
here
.

For his part, Frank was squeezing so hard Dawn thought she’d pop. The pressure brought on a flash of memory:
Daddy, I can’t breathe,
she’d said once after coming inside the house after school. A neighbor had dropped her off from gymnastics practice because Frank had forgotten to pick her up again.
You’re too strong, Dad….

Big-girl Dawn pushed away to get some oxygen, but also because she wanted to see that it was really him and not some damned vampire joke. Reaching up to hold his grizzled face in her hands, she laughed a little hysterically.

“You’re okay,” he said. “I knew the last thing she’d do was hurt you, but…”

He shook his head, out of words.

Dawn kept drinking him in. Deep lines emphasized his smile, and his green eyes were clear of their usual hangover fuzz, a sheen of what seemed like relief washing over them instead. His steady gaze was surrounded by crinkles, his skin so leathered it looked like some treasure map that might actually pay off. His dark hair resembled the usual wild-grass clearing, but it’d receded more than she remembered.

She’d missed him; she hadn’t realized just how much until now.

They hugged again, and she noticed that, in spite of his brawn, his tummy was slightly rounded. Eva had kept him fed.

“You
are
okay,” he mumbled against her hair, “right, Dawnie?”

“Okay” was such a relative term. “I’ve found you, and that makes me more than okay. Now…” Ignoring her aches and pains, Dawn squeezed him one more time, then quickly reached down, testing one of the long chains shackling his arms. “I’ve got to get you out of here.”

“Whoa, whoa…” Frank smoothed back her hair with both hands, then kissed her forehead, pressing her to his chest until she was gasping again. “I almost want to think that this is one of Eva’s mind tricks.”

Like father like daughter. “We’ve got a lot to talk about, but…” She backed away, tugged at his chains anchored against the wall. They held like a mother, but Dawn wasn’t exactly at her strongest right now.

“Ain’t these somethin’?” Frank yanked on one, too. No give from its base. “You don’t know how I’ve fought ’em. They’re some kind of impossible silver. Only the best from Eva.”

Was he actually joking around? That took her aback until she realized that Frank had found ample opportunity to get used to this captivity, that he was probably able to yuck it up all he wanted because it’d become so real to him. Yup, just a part of his everyday life, being chained to a wall by a vampire, aka his wife come back from the dead.

She glanced around the room, noticing how nice it was. A fireplace that probably hadn’t seen flames for years, the type of couches and chairs you’d find in an L.L. Bean catalog, a door halfway open to expose a clean toilet and shower, a mini refrigerator, a television.

“I get to watch all the sports I want,” Frank said, touching Dawn’s head again, “and no one nags at me about it.”

He jerked his chin up to one of two cameras perched in the corners.

“Ah,” Dawn said. “That’s how she keeps tabs.”

“I think my audience is Julia, mostly. You get a load of her? Every once in a while when she brings a meal, she’ll tell me what an honor it is to have Eva chain me up. Batshit bozo.”

As Dawn’s heart rate began to smooth out, she marveled at Sober Frank. She wasn’t used to complete sentences or articulate thoughts from him.

She’d think about all that stuff later. Right now, she just wanted to stay glad to see him and figure out how they were going to get out of here.

He motioned to a couch. “Looks like you need to sit. It’ll be a while before the welcoming committee comes through that door again.”

Was he kidding? “There’s got to be an exit somewhere, and I’m going to find it.”

“Hell, if you wanna crawl up the fire chute, give it a go. It’s blocked off except for a tiny hole in the center.” Frank shot one of his patented charming/cocky glances at her. “I’ve tried everything else.”

Well, hey, so she might as well give up then, right?

Ambling toward the fireplace, Frank demonstrated the boundaries of his chains. They were long enough to allow him freedom on this side of the room, but short enough to keep him away from the faraway door.

Smart move, Eva, Dawn thought. When she or Julia entered, Frank wouldn’t be able to ambush them. But, at the same time, he had a certain amount of movement.

Dawn stuck her head into the fireplace and peered up, squinting. Indeed, there was only a tiny hole.

One of the chimneys. A red finger.

She pulled out, flabbergasted that Kiko had actually seen something. His prediction had been cryptic as hell, but he had some of his mojo back. If Dawn hadn’t been stuffed into a secret room by her mother-cum-vampire and her Amazon lackey, she might even say things were looking up.

“I used my fork to make that,” Frank said, plopping to the sofa. He kept looking at her and smiling as if he couldn’t believe she was with him. “That hole just popped up last night, so I tried to yell in the chimney, just to see if anyone would notice my voice, like maybe a Friend on patrol. Or even you, Dawnie. I knew Eva would be bringing you home at some point, and I always imagined you coming over and hearing me before she got to you. Some warning system I am.”

“I’m surprised she didn’t repair the hole lickety-split. A Friend could’ve gotten through.”

“True enough.”

At the same moment, both of them seemed to realize they were talking about really messed-up things. This wasn’t baseball chatter or an attempted conversation about the electricity bill. This was Friends and vampires.

Frank gave her one of his funny, screwy looks. It was the type of expression that’d make her laugh when she was younger, the type that had made her love him even when she was angry enough to spit.

“So, I kind of climbed on the roof to investigate,” she said.

“You did what? Dawnie—”

“Don’t lecture me on safety, Frank. I was checking out something Kiko predicted.”

“Kiko? Well, I’ll be—how
is
he? And…” Frank’s throat worked and his eyes caught a glimmer. “And…Breisi?”

Dawn knew who he really wanted to hear about. “Breisi’s fine. She talks about you all the time—misses the crap out of you—but she’s worried.
Everyone’s
worried.”

She wouldn’t go into details about the boss. Dawn felt too rushed for that now, and she wouldn’t be telling Frank most of it anyway. Her dad would probably get all protective and pull out a shotgun, then order The Voice to marry Dawn and make her an honest woman or something. Frank was weird in a lot of old-fashioned ways; he didn’t like “Dawn’s men.”

Not that he knew about a fraction of them.

He was smiling to himself, probably hearing the name “Breisi” reverberating through his head. With that one little tell, Dawn realized just how much he missed the other woman. How deeply he felt for her.

“Breisi and I have talked,” Dawn said.

“Good for you two.”

He lowered his gaze at her, and she understood right away.

Quiet. The cameras. No talking about Limpet and Associates allowed.

“I’m just chatting about your new girlfriend.” Dawn took warped pleasure out of Eva’s probable reaction to Frank moving on without her. “I don’t care if the vamp gets offended.”

“Dawn.” He’d used the un-nickname, which meant he was pretending he could discipline her. “She’s your
mom
.”

She reared back. “You’re sticking up for her?”

He looked away, and the bottom fell out of her world.

“Tell me you haven’t forgiven her.”

“I…” Frank shot another glance to the camera, but Dawn could tell it was only so he wouldn’t have to talk.

“Goddamnit.” She laughed bitterly. “She’s tooled with your mind. What do they call this…the Stockholm syndrome?”

“She’s the woman I fell in love with.”

The woman who’d driven him to drink with her death, the woman who’d haunted him with her senseless “murder.”

“She must’ve done a number on you to even have you thinking of forgetting everything she put you through.”

“Yeah, she has.” Frank held up a finger and pointed to his head. “She’s tried to get inside the whole time, ever since that night I thought I saw someone who looked like her and followed them into the Bava nightclub.”

She remembered what The Voice had told her about Frank’s last contact:
he called me from what I now think to be Bava and said that perhaps it was time for you to come out here and fulfill your place, Dawn. Yet before he could continue, the phone went dead, and I didn’t hear from him again.

“You saw Eva there.” Dawn got to her knees. “She mind screwed, then captured you.”

“I didn’t gain consciousness for a while. I don’t know where she took me—somewhere cold and dark—but then I fully woke up here, in chains.”

“Getting you back was her first project. She told me she wants the family together again.”

“And she’s serious. Hell, is she ever serious.”

They both glanced up at the cameras.

“She’s a vampire.” If Eva’s betrayal wasn’t enough to turn him against her, maybe this would be.

Her dad only nodded, face unreadable.

“Doesn’t that mean anything?” There he was: simple Frank, good buddy to everyone, doofus supreme. So easy to take advantage of.

“Hey, I know what’s at stake,” he whispered. “Do you?”

“Obviously, I know a lot more about it than you do.”

“She’s going to turn both of us, that’s why she’s revealed herself to you, Dawnie. There’s no going back now. That’s why you’re locked in a room with me. We belong to her.”

Belong? Damned if she did. Eva had given Dawn up years ago. No late claims on these goods.

Frank continued. “I realized what was going on from the second I regained consciousness, and I was prepared to make life easier for myself. She didn’t take the time to win me over the way she did with you, but—”

“That’s ’cos she knew you’d fall for her again. She knew you’d still be a sucker, Frank.”

“We’ve got history, damn it. A man and wife…”

Agonized, he bowed his head, turning one cheek away from her. All Dawn wanted to do was remember how badly she’d yearned to find her dad; she wished she could just go to him now and hold him like any other daughter would. But he wasn’t making good choices—as usual. He’d disappointed her, especially with a woman like Breisi waiting for him.

Then Dawn noticed a faint redness on his neck.

Her own neck flashed heat, and she held a hand to it, not knowing why.

Suspicion about Frank crept in slowly. No. He couldn’t have allowed Eva to…

“Like I was saying.” His voice sounded dredged. “I didn’t do too bad for myself down here. Except for keeping her out of my head, I stopped fighting her. Damn it all, back in the day she just about ruined her career to marry me, Dawnie. And the less I fought, the more chain room she’d parcel out. I even got a TV. She told me just how much she wanted a family again, how much she missed you, too.”

Dawn wouldn’t dwell on that last part; she was just happy Frank had been mind blocking Eva. “You didn’t want to escape?”

“More than anything. To you and…” His gaze went soft, but when he glanced at a camera, he hardened up again. “…other people outside. Part of me wanted to warn you, but I couldn’t.”

“Does that mean the other part of you is on board with this whole wonky family-reunion idea?”

He gave her a look that said,
Aren’t you? Don’t you want what we never had?

Dawn didn’t react, instead forcing him to continue with her jaded silence.

“She’s been having me sleep during the day while she works, then she’ll wake me up when the sun goes down. Every night, I’ve screamed at her out of pure frustration.
Every
goddamned night.”

The lightbulb went on. Kiko had always gotten the best readings from Frank’s T-shirts after dusk. Was it because of this nightly upheaval?

“Don’t you think I want to throttle me just as much as you do right now?” Frank asked.

“You have no idea what I want to do.”

“Same here. You have no idea.” He shifted, and his chains clanked. “The worst thing is, I was afraid all my…friends…would get hurt because I know Eva isn’t alone in this. I have the feeling she’s got something else planned, but I don’t know what. I’ve wondered if she answers to a higher authority.”

There he was: Frank the PI—the man he’d become while she was away. In spite of everything, it made her kind of proud.

“Ever hear of an Underground?” Dawn sent a nasty look at the camera again. “The old woman and I touched on the topic.”

“Can she be saved from it?”

What?

“Well, can she?” he repeated.

She couldn’t fathom this. He wanted to rescue the woman who’d calculated her own murder and left a heartbroken family behind. Seriously?

“Yeah,” Dawn said. “I can decapitate her. That’d save her real good.”

Frank went pale. In his eyes, she could see him assessing the stranger she’d become.

Saying it hadn’t felt right at all; it made her guts tighten. But Eva wasn’t her mother. She wasn’t sweet, nice Jac, either. She was one of them, a Robby Pennybaker, the mini motherfucker who’d violated her and tried to kill her.

“This Underground…” he began, face flushing slightly.

“Let your beloved wife tell you about it.” Dawn hurt for Breisi, hurt for what should’ve been justice but wasn’t. “I need answers from
you
.”

“Like what?” He sounded so resigned, the loser of round one. Back to the Frank she knew, the pre-Breisi ne’er-do-well.

“For starters, how did you get involved with all this?”

As he hesitated, Dawn realized her right arm was throbbing. Great—the old injury letting her know it wasn’t happy. And she was really tired. It was all crashing in on her now.

“Careful what you say—she’ll hear us,” Frank whispered. “Eva’s hearing is that sharp.”